Cover Reveal!

Sep 27, 2021 | Writing

Due late October

Say hello to the cover of the forthcoming Coyote in the Corner. There may be a tweak or two before it’s published, but this is pretty much it.

Some of you will have seen earlier versions of this previously, because I crowdsourced opinions on the original concepts. All four of the drafts had their supporters (which says something special about the designer).

There were many considerations in working towards the final cover, but the main one was that it has to catch the eye of someone scrolling Amazon on their phone or tablet. I think that objective has been achieved 🙂

The process was that I gave Heather a number of ideas and images to play with, describing the kind of thing I was after, then I left her in peace to come up with the design concepts. The key things from the brief that have come through to the final image are boldness of design, a clear indicator of genre, and the skull image. For anyone interested, my note to her referenced

• Percy Smith’s Dance of Death series from WW1
• Goya
• Jake and Dinos Chapman
• La Mort of the Tarot de Marseilles
• A Blue Note album cover, and
• a Bill Sienkievicz New Mutants cover.

Heather can be found at Raspberry Creative Type. She’s done the layout of the book for me too, as well as a logo.

Logo!

Logo? Well yes. Technically I’m a sole trader so I decided to give my business a name. From the desk where I write, I can often see goldfinches on the bird feeders. Goldspink is an old Scots/Northumbrian name for the goldfinch.

The book is dedicated to Dad, who died nearly 38 years ago. You might think it odd that a collection of vampire-themed stories, one or two of which are quite dark, are dedicated to him. But what you don’t know is that Dad’s idea of children’s fiction was to let me read his Dennis Wheatley novels when I was 11. I clearly remember reading The Haunting of Toby Jugg while I was at Mt. Cameron Primary school, and most of the others around the same time. They Used Dark Forces, The Devil Rides Out, To The Devil A Daughter and The Kaa Of Gifford Hillary spring to mind after half a century. This has coloured my view of what the modern publishing world thinks of as Young Adult fiction, and also, no doubt, influenced my subconscious in what comes out when I’m writing.

In the meantime, I’m contemplating an order for a Goldspink T-Shirt and mug.